Читать книгу A History of the Japanese People - Kikuchi Dairoku - Страница 51

There are also some bronze vestiges to which considerable interest attaches, for evidently people using bronze weapons could not have stood against men carrying iron arms, and therefore the people to whom the bronze implements belonged must have obtained a footing in Japan prior to the Yamato, unless they came at the latter's invitation or as their allies. Moreover, these bronze relics—with the exception of arrow-heads—though found in the soil of western and southern Japan, do not occur in the Yamato sepulchres, which feature constitutes another means of differentiation. Daggers, swords, halberds, and possibly spear-heads constitute the hand-weapons. The daggers have a certain resemblance to the Malay kris, and the swords and halberds are generally leaf-shaped. But some features, as overshort tangs and unpierced loops, suggest that they were manufactured, not for service in battle but for ceremonial purposes, being thus mere survivals from an era when their originals were in actual use, and possibly those originals may have been of iron. Some straight-edged specimens have been classed as spear-heads, but they closely resemble certain ancient bronze swords of China. As for bronze arrow-heads, they occur alike in Yamato sepulchres and in the soil, so that no special inference is warranted in their case. The bronze hand-weapons have been found in twelve provinces of southern and western Japan: namely, five provinces of northwest Kyushu; three on the Inland Sea; one facing Korea and China, and the rest on the islands of Iki and Tsushima.

These localities and the fact that similar swords have been met with in Shantung, suggest that the bronze culture came from central and eastern Asia, which hypothesis receives confirmation from the complete absence of bronze vestiges in the southern provinces of Kyushu, namely, Osumi and Satsuma. Bronze bells, of which there are many, belong to a separate page of archaeology. Though they have been found in no less than twenty-four provinces, there is no instance of their presence in the same sites with hand-weapons of bronze. In Kyushu, Higo is the only province where they have been seen, whereas in the main island they extend as far east as Totomi, and are conspicuously numerous in that province and its neighbour, Mikawa, while in Omi they are most abundant of all. They vary in height from about one foot four inches to four and a half feet, and are of highly specialized shape, the only cognate type being bells used in China during the Chou dynasty (1122–225 B.C.) for the purpose of giving military signals. A Chinese origin is still more clearly indicated by the decorative designs, which show a combination of the circle, the triangle, and the spiral, obviously identical with the decorative motive* on Chinese drums of the Han dynasty (202 B.C.-A.D. 220). The circle and the triangle occur also in the sepulchral pottery of the Yamato sites, and considering the fact together with the abundance of the bells in districts where the Yamato were most strongly established, there seems to be warrant for attributing these curious relics to the Yamato culture.

*This resemblance has been pointed out by a Japanese archaeologist, Mr. Teraishi. Dr. Munro states that the same elements are combined in an Egyptian decorative design.

To this inference it has been objected that no bells have been found in the tombs of the Yamato. The same is true, however, of several other objects known to have belonged to that people. If, then, the bells be classed as adjuncts of the Yamato culture, shall we be justified in assigning the bronze weapon to a different race? On the whole, the most reasonable conclusion seems to be that all the bronze relics, weapons, and bells alike, are "vestiges of the Yamato procession at a time anterior to the formation of the great dolmens and other tombs" [Munro]. A corollary would be that the Yamato migrated from China in the days of the Chou dynasty (1122–225 B.C.), and that, having landed in the province of Higo, they conquered the greater part of Tsukushi (Kyushu), and subsequently passed up the Inland Sea to Yamato; which hypothesis would invest with some accuracy the date assigned by the Chronicles to Jimmu's expedition and would constitute a general confirmation of the Japanese account of his line of advance.